The Office of Family Assistance developed this guide to help state TANF agencies recognize the important role they have in identifying and serving families experiencing homelessness and families at risk of homelessness. It is intended to help states better assess for homelessness and housing instability during intake and formulate cohesive strategies with state and local homelessness providers and systems, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-funded Continuums of Care (CoC).

This Congressional Research Service report explains the differences in work requirements, work incentives, and time limits between TANF, SNAP, and housing assistance. Federal law requires most able-bodied adults receiving SNAP to participate in work activities, and has a time limit of 3 months for every 36-month period for able-bodied adults without dependents who do not work at least 20 hours a week. SNAP also has a work incentive for employed participants to deduct some of their earned income, which results in slightly higher benefits. One key difference between SNAP and TANF is that SNAP work requirements apply to individuals, while in TANF, states have the discretion to determine whether work requirements apply to individuals or families.

Evidence suggests that neighborhoods matter for low-income individuals’ life trajectories. Extensive federal and foundation resources have been devoted to “place-based” strategies designed to help individuals by addressing the communities where they live. Two main strategies have emerged: 1) attempts to help people living in settings of concentrated poverty move to areas of economic opportunity, and 2) efforts to improve or preserve neighborhoods for current and future residents who have low incomes. This brief from MDRC summarizes information from recent studies of these strategies. For example, there were long-term benefits, such as higher incomes and college attainment, for children who were 12 or younger when their families moved to lower-poverty neighborhoods through the federal housing voucher program. However, encouraging low-income families to move to higher-income neighborhoods cannot be the only policy response. Instead, there must be complementary and interconnected strategies to improve neighborhoods for low-income residents and increase their mobility.

This brief from the Institute for Research on Poverty explores the crisis that poor families face in finding and maintaining affordable housing. It outlines trends that led to the current housing situation of rising costs, stagnant or falling incomes, and a shortfall of housing assistance from the Federal Government. Most poor renting families now devote over half of their income to housing costs. Additionally, eviction has become more common in low-income communities. The brief describes consequences of eviction for parents, children, and communities, as well as suggestions for policy changes.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Family Unification Program (FUP) provides low-income families in the child welfare system with housing vouchers. FUP is critical to understanding the overlap between the child welfare system and housing/homelessness, as well as how to provide housing to vulnerable families and facilitate partnerships between public housing agencies and child welfare agencies. This report highlights FUP implementation in eight sites and offers innovative practices and impacts.

The National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University published this “State of the Field Scan” that explores how a mixed-income housing approach has transformed deteriorating public housing complexes into safer and more attractive developments for residents from a range of income levels. The report describes how mixed-income developments provide services to improve well-being and self-sufficiency. The authors conducted an online survey with representatives from 60 mixed-income housing developments to gather information on the demographics of the community as well as data on the types of supportive services provided, how developments tracked service use, and the developments' perceived outcomes of services provided.

This Trauma-Informed Organizational Toolkit was created to provide homeless service providers a roadmap for becoming trauma-informed. The Toolkit provides concrete guidelines for modifying practices and policies and ensuring appropriate responses to the needs of families who have experienced traumatic stress.

In a post from Sylvia Burwell, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, she describes a woman who experienced homelessness and was cared for by a community health center. Secretary Burwell notes the interagency commitment to end veteran homelessness by 2015, chronic homelessness by 2017, and family, youth, and child homelessness by 2020.

In this paper, the authors characterize the effects of neighborhoods on children’s earnings and other outcomes in adulthood by studying more than five million families who move across counties in the United States. The analysis includes quasi-experimental evidence that neighborhoods affect intergenerational mobility through childhood exposure effects.